AUTO CHRISTIANO RACERIJ
Bron: Auto Italia
| The combined ravages of a damp climate and winter road salt have chased the alfa Romeo Giulia Super to virtual extinction in the UK.
But a short hop across rare species is not only alive and well but also thriving. One og the specialists who looks after this lost tribe from Milan is 34 year-old Christian Foederer. With a subtle twist of wit, Christian has given his Sint Oederode (near Eindhoven) based classic Alfa road and race preparation workshop a Latin twist with the name Auto Christiano. Here, Alfa, Fiat and Lancia, but mostly Alfa, are spoken fluently in a business that is also a way of life.
For Christian, Auto Christiano is the culmination of a lifetime of a car related activities which qualify him as a dyed-in-the-wool petrolhead. "From about the age of eight I used to go to my father's friend's car dealership after school and do odd jobs for him. In fact, I did this till I was 16, he explained. But the car thatreally took my fancy when I was 10 was the Bertone GTV. In fact there were two of them, both belonging to one custumer, and I looked after both of them and loved them like they were my own, he said, going all starry eyed. Driving cars was naturally the next step, and the young Christian's first drive was in an old VW Beetle when he was 12. I may not have been able to drive it on public roads, he said, but I had plenty of fun driving it cross country. In fact, this was my first experience at seeing how fast I could go in a car!When I was 16, my mother bought an Innocenti Mini Cooper which she donated to my cause after someone rear-ended it at the traffic lights. It took me a year to get it back in shape, and by then I was 18 and could drive legally.The problem was that a year later it was stolen. Or perhaps it wasn't a problem, because I made a big decision, sold everything I had and bought an Alfetta.While the Alfetta may have worn an Alfa Romeo badge on its nose, it was far from Christian's dream car, and within a few months of turning 19 he had his very own2-litre Bertone GTV. This car became my all consuming passion, he explained. I read everything on the model I could lay my hands on and decided I wanted a GTAm replica. So I bought an old GTV that had been modified with glass-fibre arch flares and a front spoiler. It was black, had a vinyl roof and looked truly awful, but it was a Good straight, rust-free car that would make a good base for my project. I stripped it straight away, took the front spoiler and vinyl roof and resprayed it in red. It had a rather tacky Wolfrace wheels on it and I swopped these for 8j and 10j x 15 Compomotives. Christian used that car every day for six years, slowly turning it into a proper racer. Doing all the work on it himself, he raced this car reasonable successfully and friends in the Dutch Alfa Club began to approach him to work on their cars.Once they realised that he was mad keen and a perfectionist to boot, news of his fledgling business spread by word of mouth. Later, Christian acquired a Giulia Super. By this time, i wanted to restore the Bertone GTV again and use the Giulia as my racer, but I ran out of time for the restoration and had to concentrate on my business and the Giulia racer. I will probably finish in this winter. In its latest incarnation the Giulia has a 2-litre Twin Spark engine with around 200bhp, thanks to kronenburg engines who are famous for their race-winning BMW M3 motors. The single throttle per cylinder system is from an Opel 16-Valve race engine, and the fuel-injection system is the British made DTA which is often used on VW Beetle buggies because it is strong and reliable in hostile environments.The gearbox is standard apart from a shorter fifth ratio which comes from a Bertone 1300GT. The 65mm exhaust system and manifold were also fabricated by Christian. The rear axle has Christian built himself. An intuitive engineer, Christian designed this by making a model from bits of wood to see how the geometry should work, and then made the real thing. the springs were made to his specification and the dampers are Intrax with separate fluid reservoirs. the anti-roll bars are hollow with titanium pick-up points. the suspension obviously works, he said, because no-one in my class can take the first corner at Zolder as quickly! The A-frame rear end of the Alfas from this period are weak point, especially when the bushes get worn. But Christian's home grown rear provides far more grip than any factory GTAm from the 1970s could, and far more than Alfa engineers ever dreamed was possible from the chassis. At Brands Hatch, I take Druids in third gear and the car has so much grip there rather than slide, it wants to lift a wheel and flip over, so I actually have to unwind the steering! he said. And at Dingle Dell, I have to lift momentarily before coming back the power. The secret is to make the front very stiff, he says. This gives the rear more grip. Thus set up, the car is very neutral in corners. In tighter bends, it oversteer, in open bends, slight under steer is created for stability. The brakes are AP Racing with fourpot calipers in front and standard at the rear. The spartan interior is dominated by aluminium panels, a full roll cage, fire extinguisher, Kevlar drivers seat, race harnesses and a Momo Corsa steering wheel. Compomotive alloy wheels , 8.5j x 16, are used all round but with ET10 and ET 15 front and rear offsets respectively. Normally, you put spacers on to widen the track, Christian explained, but I could not find the right size of race tyres to work with these wheels and clear the arches so I had to specify different wheel offsets instead. In the event, the tyres are 200 x 580 x 16 inch Dunlop racing tyres as dunlop is the tyre sponsor for the Dutch Alfa Trofeo racing series. These fat tyres are covered by the widest arches ever seen on Giulia. The front wings are GRP, while the rears steel, not add-ons, but the original wings carefully beaten out and by an expert panel beater. In its competition career this car has been very successful, helping Christian to gather 10 firsts. At the time of my visit in July, victory at Zandvoort Zolder and Brands Hatch and given Christian the silverware in three of the six rounds he had contested. he also came second twice and fourth once.The most challenging round for him however, was one he did not win.In the 12 lap race at Spa, I started 34th in a field of 67 cars of mixed classes, he recounted. I charged through the field and finished fourth. Given a few more laps, who knows what might happened. At that point in the season he was leading the Championship by a solid 24points over Douwe Heida in the 260bhp Alfa 75 3.0. The comparative statistics are interesting. Christian's 2-litre Giulia weight 930kg and has 200bhp. the 3-litre V6 Alfa 75 weighs 1,010kg and is 30 km/h faster. But I can out-brake and out-corner him, said Christian. On a fast circuit like Spa he is quicker on sheer power, but on the twisty circuits like Zolder and Zandvoort I have the advantage. As we go to press, Christian has won the last two races at Spa and Hockenheim, and is the 1998 Dutch Alfa Trofeo Champion. The wildest road car Christian has built for a client is pretty modest by comparison . But a 2 -litre Twin Spark engine transplanted intto a Bertone GTV with lowered suspension by uprated springs and dampers and Christian's special rear set-up sound like a nice road car anyway. However, it seems that Christian is not content to just tinker with the performance end of the Alfa range. A complete counterpoint to his racing Giulia and the brace of other interesting classic Alfa road cars on the premises was a khaki coloured ex-Italian police Alfa Giulia Staion Wagon looking short of love attention. Used as a traffic police support car, this 1972 vintage workhorse is unique in having no blue lights on its roof. No wonder really, as it would be hard pressed to overtake much more than a milk float let alone a bunch of marauding Brits in tuned Mini Coopers! A Perkins Diesel sits under the bonnet of this sad example of how far Alfa Romeo went to accomodate their illustrious Polizia Stradale. Good torque but not much power was the sole saving grace of an engine more usually found in a forklift truck or a small boat! That, however, is not the end of the Auto Christiano tale. Outside the workshop, we did a double take when we saw a brand new Alfa Romeo van. I had a specialist in France stretch my Fiat Ducato Turbo Diesel van by 40cm and put glass in the sides, explained Christian. Then, I put an Alfa grille and badges on it. You should see it looks it gets in Italy, he said with a big grin.  |
